You can develop your own apps too using Visual studio and deploy them to Microsoft SharePoint server or upload them to SharePoint store.

Microsoft is calling everything as an app in SharePoint 2013, what I
mean by everything ... Artifacts in SharePoint such as List, libraries
etc.

When you develop apps as solution packages using visual
studio, these apps will get installed in a separate domain so that the
performance of the server will not get impacted.

One of way of
deploying apps is SharePoint hosted model in this app can't have custom
code, this is another way of securing the server from improper solutions
that use to get deployed in SharePoint environment.

This is only a very little introduction of Apps in SharePoint, I
will discuss more on how to develop Apps on SharePoint 2013 using visual
studio under the tutorials section of this website.

Let's move to configure Apps.

Install and Configure Apps:

In this post you will learn how to Install and configure Apps on SharePoint 2013. Just simply follow me I will guide you through the steps which you need to perform.

To Install and configure Apps on SharePoint 2013, you have to perform below three steps.

Set up DNS for App domain.

Create the App management and Subscription Settings service application.

Configure SharePoint to use App domain.

Please follow the below steps and you can successfully configure the apps in SharePoint 2013.

Step1: Setup DNS for App domain:

To set up DNS go to Administrative tool and select DNS.

All Apps on SharePoint have unique URL domain names, so before we’re done, we need to set up a wildcard alias.

A wildcard alias basically mean you can add anything in front of the domain name and point it to a specific address.

In the DNS manager select for your domain and right click select “New Alias”.

In the New Resource Record dialog box, enter an asterisk (*) as the Alias name, and then either browse to the record for your server or type in the DNS-name of your server. See the below screenshot.

Click ok and then ok.

Step2: Create the App Management and Subscription Setting Service Applications:

You have to add two services which are required to Install and Configure Apps on SharePoint 2013.

You can check the Application services and databases created after running above powershell commands.

Please check the below screenshots.

Step 3: Configuring SharePoint to use App domain:

To configure the Apps for SharePoint. Go to an Apps section in Central admin.

Click on Configure Apps URLs and then enter the App domain you set up. In my example I am using same domain where my SharePoint running.

In addition, you need to decide on an App prefix that all App DNS names will get. Anything will do if you follow the description of Characters allowed.

For each instance of an App you install and activate, SharePoint creates a unique URL to access the App. The unique URL starts with the prefix you choose followed by a unique identifier set by SharePoint and Finally the App domain you have created.

Click ok.

We are one
step away to use Apps and the SharePoint Store.

For that we
need to create an App catalog site collection to hold our Apps. When you add an
App by uploading an App package, this is where you will do that.

From the
Apps section of Central Administration, select Manage App Catalog. Leave the
Create a new app catalog site choice selected and hit OK to advance to the
Create App Catalog step.

Enter the Title,
website address and primary site collection administrator details. It is
similar like creation of site collection. Once it got created it will be
redirected to “Manage App Catalog” section.

You can see
in the below screens App catalog has been created.

Click on the site URL to access the App catalog.

Congratulations you have successfully configured the Apps for SharePoint 2013.

In the above screenshot you can see “App requests”,”Apps for office” and “Apps for SharePoint” section.

Conclusion:

In this post we have Installed and configured the apps successfully in SharePoint 2013.